Category / BCM112

Hashtag culture has become a phenomenon in the last 5 years, and (from first-hand experience) it can have a devastating effect to upload a great photo to twitter/instagram/facebook, only to get the hashtag horribly wrong, and embarrass yourself, as well as your online persona. This socially awesome/awkward penguin meme captures the idea of the “new years eve hashtag”; a lot of people (myself included) never know whether to hashtag the year that we’re in, or the year that we’re celebrating to come in… it’s a never ending debate! Kind of like “what came first, the chicken or the egg?”

So, I had a lot of trouble understanding craft and digital making… even after going to the lecture, even after looking at the readings and materials, I got the jist of what was going on, but I couldn’t understand how to put that into a podcast.. for this post, I (wrongly) made an audio track related to remix culture, and how the instrumental of a remix can change the whole aura of a rap song (the acapella I used). You’ll understand what I mean.

With this meme, I attempted to exploit the fact that major news outlets are trying to change to increase their readerships; sometimes they attempt to do this through twitter hashtags, and sometimes encouraging citizen led journalism (while this is more of a dynamic, these outlets are now trying to grab hold of the idea).

Instead of focusing on that, I feel that news outlets should rather focusing on giving audiences the most un-biased, informed publication on current events and any other news… they need internal repair, rather than trying to fix the problem externally.

In this Prezi, I attempted to highlight how 50 Cent has controlled his global distribution by opening up different avenues for fans to enter his life-story, which essentially is what his brand has become. His albums, movies and games are all about everything he’s overcome to become who he is today, by creating his own transmedia narrative, he’s now one of the most recognisable names in the entertainment industry, and this is how it all started.

EDIT: Had to re-do this (as well as the YouTube video) because I kept trying to change the theme and adjust a few errors and ended up ruining the whole thing, so this version is a bit different from my initial Prezi.

Above is the video I created to explore the changes brought onto rap by sampling issues, and the evolution of sampling in the rap genre. I underwent extensive research to find the samples in some of the most influential artists’ songs; from raps early beginnings in the 80’s, all the way to the present day.

My video aims to reveal how the produsage practices in hip-hop over the years made a whole new genre phenomenon – pop rap, and how the choice made when repurposing samples changes the whole scope of rap itself. I hope you enjoy!

EDIT: Had to re-upload because of some copyright issues. Now fixed, and re-uploaded.

The shift from consumers to prosumers has been very rapid with the rise of social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, which has brought on new phenomenons, such as the hashtag.

This dynamic is present in a dialogic media platform, the internet; which is a platform in which your message can be directly broadcast to anyone without any interfering restrictions. Some companies choose to use this in a way that encourages the audience to engage with them, and the more activities they are engaged in, the more of the audience they grasp.

This is the case with most major professional sports, in my case, the National Basketball Association (NBA) in America.

The NBA and its teams regularly tweet to the fans, utilizing hashtags and encouraging this audience to engage back with them through the hashtag:

Audiences are not only engaging back with the NBA and its teams, during the annual all-star weekend, there are many competitions between individual players, and these are usually sponsored. Events such as the Slam Dunk Contest, Three-Point Shootout and the Rookie-Sophomore Challenge, encourage the viewers to tweet who they want to win based on their performance, who they think should win MVP for the game, and an array of other things.

An example of the audience directly affecting the outcome of a competition is the way the NBA ran its H-O-R-S-E game between two of some of the leagues best players – Stephen Curry and John Wall. The final shot they were to take was to be decided by a Twitter poll; the fans hash tagged 1 of 4 shots available, and the most popular shot was the one that Curry and/or Wall had to attempt.

I myself have now become a new type of NBA fan – the twitter fan. The media convergence that has taken place in the NBA is spear-headed by Twitter; when I can’t find a place to watch a game, the amount of twitter accounts I follow (which include NBA writers, analysts, commentators and former/current players) allow me to experience the game without watching a second of it. Every significant moment of the game is live-tweeted by all these accounts, and I sort through it using the appropriate hashtag (for example, if the Boston Celtics were playing against the Cleveland Cavaliers the hashtag would be “#BOSvCLE”.

The NBA also aims to make its audience feel one with their respective teams, this not only acts as a good marketing strategy, it allows them to comfort the audience into the NBA world by encouraging fans to get behind their team, interact with them on social media and speak up on the internet.

Above: an advertisement for NBA apparel, demonstrating the NBA’s aim to relate to their audience.

In the case of sports, especially the NBA, the switch from consumers to prosumers, have made the audience a very important extension of the teams themselves.

The theory of man usually dictates that our genetic makeup has been mutated, developed, and evolved into our current homosapien form from primitive apes, which later developed through about 6-7 major ‘forms’ before we reached what we now distinguish as “the modern human”. This evolution took millions of years, and obviously, we won’t be around to see what humans will be like even in 50,000-100,000 years, with no way to tell either.

With innovative gadgets now heavily and rapidly influencing media platforms, technologically, this unpredictable line of evolution is NO LONGER the case.

The rate of technological evolution is relatively predictable, even though there are many years of development for new advances, there is always an end goal, with aims and visions for what a new technology is meant to achieve. Take the iPhone for example:

“Today we’re introducing three revolutionary new products. Three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone, a breakthrough Internet communications device. Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices! We are calling it iPhone!” – Steve Jobs, 2007

This quote by Steve Jobs introduced the very first iPhone in 2007 and is an example of relatively predictable technology. The clear goal was to mutate and evolve the typical mobile communications device into a melting pot of music, Internet, and phone features located on one handheld device. Naturally, this has now resulted in 24/7 access to the Internet, the evolution of early 3G in 2002 in Japan led to worldwide connectivity as we know it today.

In Thomas Freys’ article “192 Future Uses For Flying Drones”, as the name suggests, he brainstorms 192 potential (and optimistic) uses for drones in the not-so-distant future, separated into 8 different categories ranging from real estate and healthcare uses, all the way to military and vacation uses. Our natural instinct of curiosity plays a part in dreaming up these scenarios, but it is NOT POSSIBLE without the major technology; the drone. These proposed uses exemplify the prospect of healthy technological mutation, however there are other issues that could arise such as drone maintenance and control from “rogue drones”. Time will tell if these scenarios materialise and become mainstream issues.

While we currently treat our smartphones like a third hand, I feel that that is final stage in the mutation of mobile communications devices. The next major advance is sure to be the expanded, every-day incorporation of drones into society, and the issue as to whether we are ready to accept and maintain such a scenario.

The drones uses are seemingly infinite, and this is an extremely strong sign that the next step in technological evolution is upon us.

P.S. If you have 15 minutes, check out this brilliant feature by John Oliver on the issues of the United States’ current military use of predator drones, among some other factors in the use of drones: